Dan Stockman gives a damning report on Fort Wayne Housing Authority. This report involves an Audit completed by HUD. The finding from the report basely states that the FWHA was incompetent in meeting the needs of folks seeking assistance for low income housing. What a shame. To many individuals, including myself, who have been critical of, Fort Wayne Housing Authority its board and members of the African-Americans community leadership see no evil, hear no evil, so will not speak no evil of their membership into the selaed approved house negro club by raced white folks, are shouting, a lie can not live forever.
And read this for more information.
Foundation of faith; Church groups build housing ministries
Publisher: The Journal Gazette (Fort Wayne, Indiana)
By: Rosa Salter Rodriguez
First published: November 12, 2006
For pastors, it's a common frustration.
Someone knocks on the door seeking emergency help. The person needs food or heat or money to pay utility bills or high rent for barely acceptable housing.
Church workers want to help. Often they get the person through the crisis. But they can't help thinking about the long term.
"You want to go up the ladder and ask, ‘Why? Why do they need the assistance?'?" says Jon Swanson, administrative pastor of First Missionary Church in Fort Wayne. "You need to find some ways to truly get them on their feet. It's thinking about the long term, not just the short term."
Around Fort Wayne and the nation, some religious groups are finding ways to do just that. And increasingly, one way is for faith-related groups to become housing developers.
The trend is partly a byproduct of an alphabet soup of letters and numbers - CCHDO and 501c(3). CCHDO (pronounced cho-doe) stands for Certified Community Housing Development Organization, and 501c(3) refers to a portion of the Internal Revenue Service code that allows charitable groups to be exempt from taxes and their donors to claim deductions on their federal income tax returns.
Locally, such organizations have been proliferating as a way for religion-based groups to develop various kinds of housing as part of their ministry, says Heather Presley, Fort Wayne's deputy director of housing and neighborhood services.
So far, she says, 501c(3)s and CCHDOs have been used to develop housing to help the formerly homeless and those at risk for becoming homeless, in addition to new immigrants, refugees and senior citizens.
There are even organizations in Fort Wayne that work to help religious groups set up 501c(3)s.
But that's not the extent of faith-based housing involvement. This year, a faith-based group proposed developing market-rate housing for families on Fort Wayne's southeast side using private-sector financing.
And, one city non-profit, NeighborWorks, has lined up four largely black churches as sites for upcoming programs educating people on how to become homeowners and finding applicants for a pool of money for down-payments.
"It makes sense," says Nicole Turner-Ridley, NeighborWorks executive director, of the strategy for the agency's Kingdom Builders program. "Churches are where the people are."
Denise Porter-Ross, the city's coordinator for community and faith-based initiatives, says religious groups working in housing isn't new - denomination-based groups have worked for several decades on developing assisted living and continuing-care communities for retired people.
But she traces part of the recent housing fervor to the Purpose-Driven Church movement. An expansion on the ideas of Christian author Rick Warren's book of the same name, the movement urges churches to define and focus efforts on a specific ministry.
"I think a number of churches have done that and come up with housing," she says. "I think (the housing ministry) comes out of the Christian focus on reaching out and taking care of someone else."
Glynn Hines, a Fort Wayne city council member and trustee of Greater Progressive Baptist Church, which was a pioneer in Fort Wayne in spearheading a 501c(3) for housing development, says church involvement in housing can help stabilize the community. He thinks Fort Wayne needs more of it.
"In the African-American church, one thing they've learned is they have to do more than preach and teach to re-energize the community," Hines says. Developing housing "gives the church the ability to help members of their congregations be empowered and not just spiritually," he says.
Save Our Area through Redevelopment, a 501c(3) and CCHDO created by Greater Progressive, served as the non-profit arm of a public-private partnership that developed the site of a devastating tire fire into Phoenix Manor apartments for seniors in the early part of the decade.
SOAR now manages the property and plans to submit a new project by the end of the year, according to Porter-Ross. As some churches see it, says Joe Johns, pastor of Fellowship Missionary Church in Fort Wayne, being involved in local housing development comes with taking the Christian Gospel seriously.
"For us, we're beginning to realize that (bringing) the Gospel applies to every part of a person's life, and we're beginning to think holistically," he says. "If it's good news to a person's life, it should be good news to their economic situation, their housing situation, the total person."
Fellowship Missionary, Johns says, is in the first steps of its housing work. It began when several members formed The Reclamation Project, a 501c(3), in 2003 and started work on renovating the Rialto Theater at 2616 S. Calhoun St.
The group is now expanding to develop housing for refugee and immigrant families, says Angie Harrison, the project's housing coordinator.
The organization also aided the church in acquiring an adjacent property for use as transitional housing for women and children coming out of abusive situations, she says. The Reclamation Project recently qualified as the city's CCHDO in the Packard Area Planning Alliance neighborhoods, Harrison says. The plan is to buy and renovate its first property soon and use church members as volunteer labor.
"The idea is to help rehabilitate and contribute positively to those neighborhoods, and it allows them (refugee and immigrant families) an easier access to become homeowners than they would have because they don't have a history, such as a credit history, that traditional lenders would be looking for," Harrison says.
Other city housing development groups that have grown out of church involvement include Vincent House, which was begun by the Fort Wayne-South Bend Roman Catholic Diocese but now is interfaith, and a group that grew out of Fort Wayne's Christ Temple congregation.
Vincent House has been buying dilapidated buildings and restoring them as transitional housing for the formerly homeless in the neighborhood around its shelter in the 2800 block of Holton Avenue, says Ann Helmke, executive director. It formed a Vincent House Community Housing Development Corp. in 2005 to continue developing affordable housing for the program.
The group has 22 residences, 17 of them occupied, and is working on three others, she says.
"We have a benefactor on the board (of directors) who picks them up as soon as they come on the market," she says, declining to name the patron. "We try to pick them up as cheaply as possible, and we completely renovate them, new kitchens, new baths, new roofs, new siding, everything."
Families living in the group's shelter can move into the homes when they have a job or steady income from a source such as Social Security's disability program. Residents' rent is about a third of their adjusted gross income, Helmke says.
Two families have "graduated" from the transitional housing and gone on to buy their own homes, Helmke says, "and we've changed the whole neighborhood. It's become a safer place."
Christ Temple's 501c(3) also created scattered-site transitional housing units and was used to develop Memorial Park Estates senior housing at 2024 Maumee Ave.
"We began with Memorial Park Estates in 2000," says Albert Brownlee, resource development director. "It was a vacant lot. It was owned by the church, and the plan had been initially that it would be the place where we would build our new church.
"When we considered some things with our church building project, we realized it could be better used for affordable housing there in the Memorial Park community because there was no project of that nature in that part of the city."
Memorial Park Estates, constructed with a $3.11?million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and $29,000 from the city, contains 34 one-bedroom units designed for singles or couples 62 or older.
It is operated as a 202 project of the housing department, meaning that tenants who meet adjusted gross incomes of $33,500 for singles and $38,250 for couples pay 30?percent of that in rent, according to Brownlee.
The project now has only one vacant unit, which is expected to be occupied by the end of this month. Memorial Park Estates opened in December 2005, Brownlee says, adding there's no requirement that a prospective tenant be a member of the church.
Though members may be encouraged to apply, they are not given preference, says Brownlee, himself a Christ Temple member. But the church still looks at Memorial Park Estates as a ministry.
"Definitely," Brownlee says. "From a church standpoint, it's an outgrowth of the church and an arm of ministry because it allows us to provide a service. It's not about gaining church members but providing something people need."
Another senior housing project, the 80-unit Trails Edge on East State Boulevard near the Parkview Hospital campus, was also developed by a faith-based 501c(3) group.
But that group, National Church Residences, based in Columbus, Ohio, is nationwide in scope; it's the largest non-profit developer of affordable senior housing, with 280 communities in 27 states and Puerto Rico. Trails Edge, with 80 one- and two-bedroom units in a four-story building is its first entry into the Fort Wayne market.
National Church Residences, which grew out of four Presbyterian churches in central Ohio but is now interfaith, partners with large, institutional investors such as insurance companies, says Michelle Norris, the company's vice president for acquisitions and development.
Investors get tax credits over 10 years for their investment in the projects, she explains, adding the method of financing "is growing" as the Department of Housing and Urban Development cuts back on financing projects directly.
"The tax credit program is about the only way to produce affordable housing for families seniors," she says, noting rents for those 55 and older who meet income qualifications are generally about 25?percent cheaper than market rates.
Trails Edge was a real money-saver for resident Doris Ballard, 91, who was the second person to move in last November.
"I was losing my money too fast where I was," says the International Harvester retiree who had been living at a retirement home that provided meals.
"I left my home and went into that place because it was nice and there wouldn't be anything for me to do, but it got to be more than I could chew (financially)," she says. "Now I get my meals brought in through a service, and I still don't cook."
Meanwhile, Come as You Are Community Church is moving forward with plans to develop the first phase of a market-priced housing development, South Anthony Pointe, on land near its church at 7910 S. Anthony Blvd.
It has formed Southeast Development Corp. as a 501c(3) and plans to use private financing through the out-of-state Kennedy Group, pastor Anthony Payton says.
About 20 people have been pre-qualified as prospective home buyers, he says. At least 25 new homeowners is the goal of NeighborWorks' Kingdom Builders program, which is working through Come As You Are, Mount Calvary Missionary Baptist Church, Christ Temple and New Joshua Full Gospel Church, Turner-Ridley says.
The churches will be the sites for sessions teaching financial literacy, budgeting and credit repair, all of which are necessary to qualify for and support a mortgage, she says.
The Wells Fargo Foundation has chipped in $50,000 and participating churches will raise $5,000 apiece for down-payment assistance to participants.
They can buy a home "anywhere in Fort Wayne," Turner-Ridley says. But she expects as least some will buy into the South Anthony Pointe development.
"I know the pastors partnering with us, their goal is to see as much of the folks who benefit as possible and want to live there buy into that neighborhood. They support that development in a big way," she says.
Darrell Poeppelmeyer, a former banker and Church of the Nazarene pastor who now heads Faith Based Community Resource in Fort Wayne, says housing development can be a difficult ministry road.
He has assisted several religious groups in building organizational structures, including 501c(3)s, that satisfy the government that "dollars are not being used to buy hymnbooks" yet remain true to their foundation in faith.
Sometimes, he says, "these groups are extremely weak and inexperienced. They need some tough and experienced developers to come in and make things work."
But there can be a payoff, he adds.
Christians, Poeppelmeyer says, have traditionally been very good with "inward care" - worshipping God and looking after the needs of members.
"But on what I call ‘outward care,' we sometimes fall short," he says. "This is one way to have an outward focus."
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